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Cheapest SSD for Macbook Pro early 2008

M

mhuk01

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Jul 5, 2006
336
0
South West England
Hello

I would like to upgrade the hard drive on a 2008 macbook pro.

I am looking for the cheapest SSD drive that works on this machine. I understand it doesn't need to be the latest and greatest Sata III, as my machine won't be able to utilize the speed.

Does anyone have any experiences with this process?

Thanks
 
mhuk01 said:
Hello

I would like to upgrade the hard drive on a 2008 macbook pro.

I am looking for the cheapest SSD drive that works on this machine. I understand it doesn't need to be the latest and greatest Sata III, as my machine won't be able to utilize the speed.

Does anyone have any experiences with this process?

Thanks
Click to expand...

I bought a PNY XLR8 Series. It's pretty cheap and SATAIII. I read somewhere that some SATAIII SSDs downrate to SATA I when they find a SATA II bus. I don't know if this is the case with the PNY because I'm using it on an external enclosure, which doesn't give a trusty sample of its real performance.
 
I just bought an XLR8 from Amazon because it was cheap for a 2010 13" MBP and it was horrible. Did fresh install of Mavericks and it constantly hung up. Erased and repartitioned a 2nd time, did it again, same issue. Sent it back. Maybe I just got a bad one but there were a number of Amazon and other reviews with the same issue with older MBPro's. I ended up ordering an OWC Sata 3 rather than SATA 6 per OWC's (and others) recommendations. Should have it tomorrow. Hopefully that will resolve it.
 
TB07-NJ said:
I just bought an XLR8 from Amazon because it was cheap for a 2010 13" MBP and it was horrible. Did fresh install of Mavericks and it constantly hung up. Erased and repartitioned a 2nd time, did it again, same issue. Sent it back. Maybe I just got a bad one but there were a number of Amazon and other reviews with the same issue with older MBPro's. I ended up ordering an OWC Sata 3 rather than SATA 6 per OWC's (and others) recommendations. Should have it tomorrow. Hopefully that will resolve it.
Click to expand...

Hmmm... maybe it has something to do with the SATA III/II issue. According to Blackmagic Disk Speed Test this PNY SSD is giving me around 170MB/s in writes when installed into an Akasa enclosure. But it seems pretty fast when running my Win8 VM on it.
 
brdeveloper said:
Hmmm... maybe it has something to do with the SATA III/II issue. According to Blackmagic Disk Speed Test this PNY SSD is giving me around 170MB/s in writes when installed into an Akasa enclosure. But it seems pretty fast when running my Win8 VM on it.
Click to expand...

No one said it wasn't fast, just the compatibility as an internal system drive was the issue. According to OWC (who could have sold me a SATAII or SATAIII for the same price - so they weren't making any more of less off it) the issue was that some SATA3's just aren't reliable in an older MBP. Basically it was a crapshoot. Since the MBP doesn't have a SATAIII controller anyway it made no difference to me so I went with the one that had less chance of a hassle.

No if I can only get the damned headphone jack to work!
 
TB07-NJ said:
I just bought an XLR8 from Amazon because it was cheap for a 2010 13" MBP and it was horrible. Did fresh install of Mavericks and it constantly hung up. Erased and repartitioned a 2nd time, did it again, same issue. Sent it back. Maybe I just got a bad one but there were a number of Amazon and other reviews with the same issue with older MBPro's. I ended up ordering an OWC Sata 3 rather than SATA 6 per OWC's (and others) recommendations. Should have it tomorrow. Hopefully that will resolve it.
Click to expand...

The PNY XLR8 is only a few dollars cheaper than the Crucial M500 in the same capacities. I'd tend to avoid the Sandforce controller based SSDs for SATA-II based MacBook Pros unless they are well tested for compatibility, such as the OWC. But OWC are expensive and this is a thread for cheap SSDs.

Some Sandforce based SATA-III SSDs didn't play nice with Mac and pc with SATA-II interfaces. The SATA link should have negotiated SATA-II speeds, but often failed and the link fell back to SATA-I speeds.

From my understanding, the Marvell controllers found in the Crucial M4, M500, M550, Sandisk Ultra Plus and Sandisk Extreme II don't have this problem. Neither do the Samsung controllers in the Samsung 830, 840 and 840Pro/EVO SSDs.

EDIT - perhaps the link negotiation issue doesn't matter to the OP as I think his MBP might use the original SATA 1.5 Gb/s speed, but I'd still recommend an SSD with a good reputation for reliability for just a few dollars more.
 
Last edited:
alex0002 said:
EDIT - perhaps the link negotiation issue doesn't matter to the OP as I think his MBP might use the original SATA 1.5 Gb/s speed, but I'd still recommend an SSD with a good reputation for reliability for just a few dollars more.
Click to expand...

Equally, going for a SATA3 drive means you can always pull it and move the SSD to a new machine.

The Crucial M500 I can vouch for, has been totally reliable and fast in my 2011 13", even in the optical bay, running at negotiated 6G without problems. This maybe somewhat unusual in this era machine but investing in a good SATA3 SSD for the few $$ more will likely be worth it.
 
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